Locally, human values usually are modelled by TGs.
You can define several ethical models in terms of their preferred terminal value or set of terminal values; for negative utilitarianism, for example, it’s minimization of suffering. I see human value structure as an unsolved problem, though, for reasons I don’t want to spend a lot of time getting into this far down in the comment tree.
Or did you mean “locally” as in “on Less Wrong”? I believe the term’s often misused here, but not for the reasons you seem to.
What’s conflict without contradiction?
Because of the structure of Boolean logic, logical axioms that come into conflict generate a contradiction and therefore imply that the axiomatic system they’re embedded in is invalid. Consequentialist value systems don’t have that feature, and the terminal values they flow from are therefore allowed to conflict in certain situations, if more than one exists. Naturally, if two conflicting terminal values both have well-behaved effects over exactly the same set of situations, they might as well be reduced to one, but that isn’t always going to be the case.
You can define several ethical models in terms of their preferred terminal value or set of terminal values; for negative utilitarianism, for example, it’s minimization of suffering. I see human value structure as an unsolved problem, though, for reasons I don’t want to spend a lot of time getting into this far down in the comment tree.
Or did you mean “locally” as in “on Less Wrong”? I believe the term’s often misused here, but not for the reasons you seem to.
Because of the structure of Boolean logic, logical axioms that come into conflict generate a contradiction and therefore imply that the axiomatic system they’re embedded in is invalid. Consequentialist value systems don’t have that feature, and the terminal values they flow from are therefore allowed to conflict in certain situations, if more than one exists. Naturally, if two conflicting terminal values both have well-behaved effects over exactly the same set of situations, they might as well be reduced to one, but that isn’t always going to be the case.